Shroud of Shadow (3 page)

She wrapped Omelda in her cloak, added her own for warmth, then rose and went to the window. The wind had died, the stars were bright. The moon was swinging low. Close to dawn.

And Natil thought of her dream.

Sun, moon, trees, mountains, sky. All these she knew. But that thing in the sky was nothing that she had ever seen before. Glass . . . and metal. It had to be the work of humans. But what humans could do such a thing? Not even Leonardo had known the secrets of natural law that would put something like that into the air.

It flew. It was flying. And that meant . . .

She did not know what it meant.

The wind stirred, rustled the eagle feather that hung from the braid in her hair. She touched it, smiled softly in spite of her sorrow. Her journey had been long, but she had found kindness in many places. Even now, as human as she had become, she still had friends in the world. But the time of the Elves was over, and Natil had come home to Adria and to Malvern Forest in order to follow her kind into oblivion.

Oblivion. It was an attractive thought after so long, after so much loss and disappointment. But the dream intruded. A flying thing of glass and metal. What had she seen?

Omelda stirred.

Putting the puzzle aside, Natil went to her, knelt. With the return of consciousness, Omelda's broad forehead had knotted, and her dark eyes, half closed, had turned faraway and pained. “It's prime.”

Natil glanced involuntarily at the window. True: the sky was just beginning to lighten on this Good Friday morning.

“Oh, God . . .”Omelda's hands went to her head.

“Are you in pain?”

“It doesn't hurt.”

“I find that hard to believe, beloved.”

“It never . . . hurts. Not that way.”

Natil tried again. “Did they hurt you?”

Omelda's eyes, still glassy, flicked fully open. “They? Who?”

“The . . .” Natil indicated the bloodstains on her cloak and skirt. “. . . the men.”

Omelda peered fuzzily at Natil, then at the stains. “Oh . . . that . . .” She shrugged. “I guess they did. I'll heal.”

Natil found herself at a loss. “You're not . . .” She was suddenly groping for words.

“Not what?”

“Ah . . . upset . . .”

Even through the fuzziness, Omelda finally understood. She glanced at the blood again. “Why should I be? My body's dung.”

Natil's incredulity grew. “Who . . . who told you that?”

Again, a shrug. “Saint Benedict.”

Natil puzzled over the woman's words, but Omelda heaved herself to her feet and groped her way to the window. “Prime.”

“That . . . that is so.”

Omelda seemed to come to a sudden recollection, turned to Natil. Her dark eyes were vague, but her voice was urgent. “Can you play something? For me?”

Play for her? Of course Natil would play for her. She might sleep, she might see nothing but darkness behind her closed eyes, but she could at least play, could at least offer what shreds of elven comfort were still hers to give. “What . . . what do you wish to hear?”

Omelda again put her hands to her head, grimaced as though in futility, dropped them. “Anything. Just . . . just play.”

She had said much the same thing the night before, and there was a creeping desperation in her tone that made Natil put her questions aside and take up her harp. The instrument—old and well seasoned,--had held its tuning throughout the night, and the first chord of an old
lauda
, a human song she had learned in Tuscany, rippled out from the strings.

Omelda leaned against the wall and allowed herself to slide tot he ground. Her eyes had closed as though in expectation, but, suddenly, they reopened. “Not that. That's too much like . . . like . . .” Her brow furrowed, knotted anew. “Play . . . what you were playing last night. Can you play that, please?”

Natil blinked. What she had been playing last night was her homage to the Lady she could no longer see. “I . . .”

“That . . . please . . .”

Natil hesitated. One did not simply play worship. It was not a song to be reeled off like wool from a ball of yarn. The notes started out with thought, grew into spirit, fleshed themselves in music. It was not simply playing: it was incarnation. “Beloved . . . I . . .”

But her own words stilled her protests, put her harp back on her lap.
Beloved.
The Elves had always addressed humans so. Like younger siblings, or like sons and daughters, they had been dear to Natil's people, and in spite of the persecutions, genocide, and hatred that had been directed at the Elves, the word remained, the feelings endured.
Beloved.
And one of these fragile creatures who knew at most only eighty or ninety years of life had asked for help, had asked to be freed from the pain of a moment.

It was, perhaps, the whole reason for Elves, and, having become so human, Natil clung to it. In a minute, with only a hint of an inner tear for all that she had lost, for all the innumerable swords that had pierced the elven heart, she was offering homage and love to the Lady, calling up a faint shadow of the music that had sustained her from the Beginning.

Omelda's face went slack, and then the fuzziness left her, to be replaced by such intensity and focus that Natil wondered whether this young woman might be one of the many who carried some small trace of elven blood, a genetic remembrance of a time long ago when mortal and immortal had loved . . . and had consummated that love. It was likely. After so long, after so many generations, most humans had a little of the blood . . .

Natil played the last note, and as the strings of her harp rang into metallic silence, she fought down the discouragement that had become her constant companion.

. . . as though it would ever do them any good.

A brief flash of embers from the low fire. Natil stared at it. Metal. Flying. A sparkle of glass like a star in the blue vault. What . . .?

She bent her head, dropped her hands. Wishful thinking, more than likely. A human dream: that was all. But Omelda, intense and awake, was rubbing her face, and, after a moment, her eyes fell on her cloak. She lifted it, examined the blood spots. Brusquely, she pulled up her skirts, prodded experimentally at her smeared thighs and her vulva, winced only a little. “You probably think I'm crazy.”

Natil shook her head slowly. “I do not.”

“Then you're the only one.”

“I daresay.”

Omelda hardly noticed her words. She dropped her hem carelessly. “Well . . . it'll heal.”

Natil discovered that her patience had run out much sooner than she had ever thought possible. “Woman, are you so indifferent towards your own body?”

Focused, black eyes returned her stare. “I told you. It's dung. I wanted them to leave me alone. They wanted sex. I gave it to them. If they're interested in dung, that's their business. At least they left me alone.”

It happened. It happened everywhere in Europe. It was, in fact, worse in other places. Natil, nonetheless, felt a little dizzy, passed a hand over her face.
I have been alone too long. I have wandered too long. It has become a terrible world: I shall be glad to fade.

Omelda, without noticing Natil's distress, had stumped over to the window. She leaned out and looked to the right to watch the sunrise. “I'm glad they left me alone,” she said over her shoulder. “It gave me time to think. It gave me time to reach the cliffs. I . . .” She turned back into the room, hands crammed into the pockets of her apron and the spots of her blood brown against the coarse cloth of her skirts. “I found you.”

Found her she had. Natil nodded, wondering what it meant.

Omelda's mouth worked for the better part of a minute. Then: “What do you do?”

“I am a harper.”

“No, not that.” Omelda stared at her, intent, stubborn: a plowhorse with its eye fixed on the end of the furrow. “What do you do with that music you play? It's the only thing that's ever . . .” She suddenly grimaced, turned back to the window. “There it is again.”

Natil stared, speechless. Omelda might well have been mad.

Eyes glazed, Omelda murmured softly, the syllables clumping along with metronomic regularity: “
Pueri Hebraeorum, portantes ramos olivarum, obviaverunt Domino, clamantes, et dicentes: Hosanna in excelsis. Per omnia saec—
” She broke off, clutched at her face, slid her hands back to cover her ears. “There it is again. I can't . . . help it.”

Natil lifted her hands to her harp, struck a chord. The effect was instantaneous: Omelda shuddered, gasped, let go of her ears. Intensity and focus returned. Black as they were, her eyes burned.

“Can you . . . can you teach me to do that?” she said.

“To play the harp?”

“To make the voices go away.”

“Voices?” Natil found herself bewildered—and dismayed by that bewilderment.

“The voices in my head. I . . .” Omelda seemed to struggle with words. “You'll think I'm crazy . . . but . . .” A hysterical laugh rose up out of her like a bubble from a mud hole. “But why should I care? You already know I'm crazy.”

Omelda was in pain, and Natil's being was crying out in response, yearning to heal, to help. The Elves were gone, faded and fading, but their yearnings remained.

Omelda plunged on. “I hear the chants of the Office. All of them. Eight times a day. I can't get rid of them.” She suddenly glanced through the window and the door almost fearfully, as though listeners might be there, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I ran away . . . from my convent . . . because of that. The voices. They were driving me crazy. Every time I'd hear them, it would get worse. So I left, and I hid. I'm still hiding. But I stay away from churches . . . because the voices get worse every time I hear the chants.”

Natil began to understand, but understanding did no more than deepen her discouragement. She could not heal Omelda's body; she could not heal her mind. Only a century ago, the magic had still been there, but now . . . nothing. Now, Natil was but a harper. That the strings she plucked had any effect at all was witness only to the depth and beauty of what was fading, guttering into darkness and shadow.

Four and a half billion years of starlight. And now this. It would be good to fade. She wanted to fade.

Omelda's eyes swung back to Natil, and the harper almost winced at the touch of that hot, demanding glance. “I heard your harp, and the voices went away. And when they started to come back, you played, and they went away again. Can you teach me how to do that so . . . so I can stay sane? So I can have my own mind? So I can think? Can you? Would you?”

“Can I teach you?” Natil sighed, set her harp aside, felt the impossibility of what Omelda had asked, knew that her question demanded an honest reply. “I could, given time, teach you to play the harp,” she said. “But I am not sure what else. What I play and what you might someday play might well be two entirely different things.” Different? Of course they would be different. The magic was gone. Only shreds and patches remained. “And, in any case, it would take time. And I will not be in Maris much past Sunday.” And, she considered, she might not be in the world much past that.

“You're leaving Maris after Easter?”

“I will harp in the square on Sunday, for I need money for food. I will leave afterward.” Natil hung her head, discouraged. Omelda was asking for something that was dead. The magic was gone, the healing was gone, the Elves were gone. The days of miracle and wonder were long past. She could, in fact, hardly remember them.

Omelda pressed. “Where are you going?”

“South. Towards Furze.”

“I'm coming with you.” Despite Omelda's forthright declaration, though, there was a hint of anxiety in her tone. Apostate nuns, Natil recalled, were hunted rather mercilessly by both Church and State.

She regarded the runaway for a moment. “Your convent is near Furze, is it not?”

Omelda's manner abruptly turned hunted. “How . . . how did you know? Are you with the Church?”

Natil did not laugh: she was afraid to allow herself to be so bitter. “Ever since the Council of Ephesus, the Church could not be more against me.” Omelda blinked at her words, but Natil was not worried: the world neither believed in Elves, nor, in fact, had much of a reason to believe. Doubtless, Omelda would think her sense of humor rather quirky, that was all. “But be at peace,” Natil continued. “I am not with the Church. I simply know that there is a Benedictine monastery down that way, and that the abbot is a pious man who models himself after Blessed Wenceslas. That monastery fathered a nunnery, also good.”

“Dame Agnes is a holy woman.” Omelda's words were toneless, regretful. “She's very fair. I rather liked her. I wouldn't have left except . . . except . . .”

Her words trailed off, and Natil sensed that the Office was again growing on her. Rising, she put a hand on the young woman's shoulder, felt the strong muscles that the life of a char had given her. “Omelda, beloved . . .”

“Play something, please.”

“I cannot be with you always. You must learn to do this yourself.” And had not Terrill once said much the same to a fledgling Elf struggling to accept herself and her new identity? Terrill, though, had at least given Mirya the tools she had needed to help herself. Natil had nothing so lasting to offer.

Omelda's eyes were glazed. “Play something,” she said. “You've got . . . to stay with me.”

“I cannot. I must go south.”

“Then I'm coming with you.”

“Dear child, where I am going, you cannot—”

But Omelda would not be put off, and she took hold of Natil's tunic, not weeping, but dry-eyed and with that terrible intensity. “I don't know who you are, Natil,” she said, “but I don't care. I've been living with these voices for twenty years, and you're the only person who's ever made them go away. Now, I came up to these cliffs last night to throw myself off—I mean, I'm damned anyway, aren't I?—but I didn't. I found you.”

It was so, Natil thought. In all these times of fading, in all this globe over which she had walked these last hundred years, she had been found in a derelict fishing village above Maris . . . by someone who needed her. There was meaning in that, just as there was meaning—there
had
to be meaning—in that brief, incomprehensible vision of a flying thing of metal and glass.